Integrating Technical Systems for Sustainable Land Use and Land Cover Management: Soil, Environment, and Agricultural Production Perspectives

Dear Colleagues,

Land use and land cover systems are influenced by interacting environmental, agricultural, technological, and socio-economic processes. Addressing current challenges associated with soil degradation, environmental change, climate change, food security, and sustainable agricultural production requires integrated approaches that capture the complexity and dynamics of these systems. Nonetheless, research and operational applications in land use and land cover management have often remained fragmented across disciplinary and technical domains. Soil property modelling, Earth observation, geographic information systems, environmental monitoring, agricultural modelling, and data-driven analytical approaches are frequently developed and applied independently, despite their potential complementarities.

Recent advances in remote and proximal sensing, digital soil mapping, geospatial technologies, environmental modelling, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing, and integrated data systems are creating new opportunities to connect diverse information sources and scales of analysis. Integrating these technical systems can improve the monitoring, assessment, modelling, and prediction of changes in soils, land cover, ecosystems, and agricultural production. Such integration is particularly important for developing reliable and spatially explicit information to support sustainable land management, environmental protection, climate adaptation, and agricultural decision-making.

Calls for integrated and interdisciplinary approaches demonstrate a growing recognition that sustainable land systems cannot be effectively understood through isolated datasets, methods, or disciplinary perspectives. Integrating technical systems also creates opportunities to link processes across spatial and temporal scales, from field- and farm-level soil and crop conditions to landscape, regional, and broader patterns of environmental and land cover change.

For this Special Issue, we welcome contributions that advance the integration of technical systems for sustainable land use and land cover management through empirical research, methodological innovation, conceptual frameworks, modelling approaches, and decision-support applications. Contributions may address interactions among soil, environmental, and agricultural production systems, including, but not limited to the following:

• Integration of soil, environmental, agricultural, and geospatial information;
• Digital soil mapping and soil information technologies;
• Remote sensing and Earth observation for land monitoring;
• Multi-source data fusion and interoperability;
• Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and GeoAI;
• Environmental and ecosystem monitoring and modelling;
• Sustainable soil and land management;
• Agricultural production, precision agriculture, and smart farming;
• Land degradation, restoration, and reclamation;
• Water, soil moisture, and irrigation management;
• Land use and land cover change modelling; and
• Spatial decision-support systems.

Contributions demonstrating meaningful integration across technical systems, data sources, disciplines, and spatial or temporal scales are especially welcome. Studies that bridge scientific innovation and practical application, while supporting sustainable, resilient, and productive land systems, are especially encouraged.

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Dr. Zama Eric Mashimbye
Prof. Dr. Adriaan van Niekerk
Dr. Zahn Münch
Dr. Kyle Loggenberg
Guest Editors

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